AN OLD YOUNG MAN still here, though-or part of the time, anyway." A few years ago, he moved out of the city for the first time in his life, to Providence, Rhode Island, but he retaIns this place and makes a point of coming down for a few days every couple of weeks, to attend to strip business and collect fresh ideas. My eyes were growing accustomed to the dimness now, and the clutter was beginning to differentiate into an aston- ishing protean hoard. Bookshelves sagged under the weight of ragged old volumes-an "Encyclopedia of Aberra- tions," "The Elements of Highway En- gineering," "The Lexicon of the Yiddish Theater," books on magic and Victorian England and toys and obscure cults. Katchor followed my gaze. "Most of that stuff comes from the outside bins at the Strand," he said, almost apologetically. "I make it a rule never to pay more than fifty cents for a book" The shelves also held a broken accordion, a slew of dusty papier-mâché pumpkins, a couple of door-to-door-salesman trophies (little gilded men striding purposefully, their gilded briefcases swaying). Pinned up on the walls were a faded poster for the 1933 Chicago International Exposition, several New Haven bus transfers, a faded engraving of a Puerto Rican lighthouse, some cards for Capern's Finch Mix, and an array of matchbox labels. "I'm a member of the British Matchbox Label and Booklet Society," Katchor told me, waving toward a pyramid of brittle old boxes in one corner. "The serious collec- tors usually limit themselves to the labels alone, but, for some reason, I like the whole box-especially the ones from In- dia." He probed among the diminutive packages-All-American, Bird's Eye, Club House ("which actually-see?- happens to have been made in Russia"), The Arc Light, Hotel Astor-and even- tually turned up a few of the Indian boxes. "Incredible," he said. "The care those people showered upon such com- pletely incidental objects-Jour-color li- thography! Amazing." Sliding open an ancient wooden filing cabinet, Katchor revealed another collection, this one of cheap, cheap nov- elties, cheesy toys from the days when the label "Made in Japan" had an en- tirely different connotation. "I like the cheapest things, the orphans, the ones hanging in the back of the kinds of stores that most people would never dream of } } I ; 1 I: I I - .. ......'* _.00 61 . ... . . . ^": v" - "Oh, and my lawyer said to say 'hi' to your lawyer. " . stepping into in the first place. Slum toys, they're sometimes called. Like this one here." He held out a palm-size plas- tic doll labelled "Suk' g Baby." Carefully, almost reverently, he put It back. He pulled out a pack of toy cigarettes and then a Voice Tester, a little cardboard pad with a wooden button: push the button and you get to discover the little needle embedded inside-a regular laugh sensation. Strange things. The building shuddered-a groan, a rattling in the rafters. "Oh, that's noth- ing," Katchor assured me. "Just the countervveights of the elevator. Gets so you don't even notice it." I asked him where he had got the in- spiration for Julius Knipl. 'Well, one day, several years back, I got a call from Art SpIegelman, who told me to call Russ Smith, I think that's how it was," he said. "For many years, I've contributed to Raw, the magazine of avant-garde comics that Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, put out. Anyway, Smith used to run a paper in Baltimore, and now he was launching this new paper here, and Art thought that I'd be a good person to do a stnp, and so I made the call and Smith made . an offer. So I began to think about what I might do in that kind of format. I mean, I've been drawing cartoons ever since I was a child-in fact, I even edited a cartoon journal of my own, this thing here." He pulled out two issues of Picture Story-the only two issues, as it happens, one dated 1978, the other 1986. They feature his own work-long, seemIngly mundane narratives that turn increas- ingly surreal-and also strange and re- markable contributions by such like- visioned spirits as Jerry Moriarty, Martin Millard, Peter Blegvad, Mark Beyer, and an anonymous Dutch artist (circa 1840). "Nobody wants this sort of thing," Katchor conceded dispiritedly. "There's no market. Bookstores won't stock them, and when you attempt to get comics places to carry them it's like pouring vinegar into Coke and trying to sell that. Pathetic. So, anyway, here was a chance to do something on a more regular basis, and I wanted to come up with something more-what should I say?-commercial. I realized that with a strip you need a principal character who can carry the action of the story from week to week, but I was having a hard time figuring what my character should